Tuesday, April 27, 2010

TWD—Chockablock Cookies and C&H Sugar Giveaway Reminder

Let’s see how this goes. I’m writing this post Sunday night and trying for the first time to post it on Tuesday. Hope it works! (I know, baby steps for me in the blogging world, as I’m sure most have been doing this forever.)

Movin’, movin’, movin’. We are movin’. Tuesday! TWD day. We’re not moving to Utah yet, just have to be out of our house (so glad we sold it!). So we’re moving to a duplex. (The boys will be able to walk to and from school, that will be awesome!) This will be a fun “camping” type adventure for us. We’re only taking our mattresses, two couches, the dining room table and chairs and as few necessities as we can live with for two months—and yes, that means I’m keeping most of my kitchen things! ;) The only cookbook I’ve left out of packing is Dorie’s Baking From My Home to Yours and my big three-ring binder full of Paige's recipes from all her classes I’ve taken. Her recipes are fantastic so if you haven’t, check out her new blog sometime!

So I was emailing with Amanda from Amanda's Cookin' last week and she mentioned she’d made the TWD pick for this week already, the Chockablock Cookies, which were chosen by Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet. (Mary will have the recipe on her blog.) Amanda motivated me to make the cookies up real quick before we got too busy with the move for me to get it done. So I made a half batch of these cookies and I’m so glad I did.

I love these. They are full of oats and nuts and dried fruit and chocolate (I left out the coconut this time, but coconut is on the ingredient list, too.) The day I made them, I baked four cookies and froze the rest into balls of dough ready to bake. The half recipe I made, made 17 cookies. In the cookie dough, I put some chopped dried apricots, some mixed dried cranberries, tart cherries and blueberries (with added antioxidants!), some pecans and some Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips. I baked the four cookies for 13 minutes. They were just a tad crunchier that I’d wanted. But look at this---great warm from the oven.

So when I got the rest out to bake a few days later, I baked them for only about 12 minutes when they were frozen and I liked them a lot more. They were perfectly chewy, slightly crisp and FULL of good things! I will definitely make these cookies again.

I did not think the molasses flavor overpowered these at all and I love the texture it gave the cookies. They were still great a couple days later, too.

I really like the apricot/chocolate combo as well as all the other great flavors in these cookies. And just because photos of this one are rare, I must post that Scott was recently chosen as one of only 29 students at his school to have some of his art work displayed at the Lawrence Art Museum. Scott LOVES art and we are so proud of him and all the great things he does. We got to go see his work displayed among all the other things from many other students in schools throughout Lawrence. Knowing there weren’t many chosen from each school, we were surprised to see our neighbors there with their little girl who also was chosen. How fun!

Great job, Scott. The tree is painted with black paint and the colors are done with oil pastels. So we may be down with internet use over the next few days. Hopefully we’ll be back up and running soon! Can’t wait to get settled into our new place so I can bake again! Kevin is headed out to Utah with a couple friends in a 26 foot rental full of as many of our things as we can live without this weekend. He’ll fly back on Monday. Oh this will be quite the week!

Want to check out all the other Chockoblock Cookies out there, head over to the TWD site and see the list of bloggers and their cookie creations.

Just a reminder if you haven’t yet, head over to my giveaway blog and enter to win a gift card from C&H Sugar to have a bake sale and raise money to help fight childhood hunger in the US with Share Our Strength. You can enter for the giveaway until Wednesday, April 28 at 8 p.m. CST.

26 comments:

Congrats on the house sale Katrina! And on the fabulous cookies - so glad you liked them - I thought they were wonderful too! I love how they're so adaptable to ingredients... truly a kitchen sink kind of cookie. Congrats to Scott as well!

Congratulations to Scott on his first museum show! Love his painting -- quite sophisticated for someone his age. The cookies look good -- I'd enjoy them with coconut and maybe more chips and less fruit. Haha.

Hey there! I'm a student baker from Singapore and I'm a huge fan of your blog. I've been following it since last year, way before I started my own baking blog. I was about to email you for some help, but was having some problem with microsoft outlook.

A moment ago, I was trying out some white chocolate muffins. I used toblerone chocolate, and left them in relatively large chunks as the recipe suggested. To my horror, the chocolate burned way before the muffins were sufficiently cooked, and there were huge black puddles all over my muffin tray. Any idea how to go about that? Would really appreciate it if you can get back to me at cherine_teh@hotmail.com. Thank you! :> PS. your cookies always look so good!

Oh girl,I do not envy you moving! I hate moving :-P So glad you made the cookies, and they look great! I used half molasses and half agave and they were still great. I did use the coconut and not a soul knew it was in there, added nice chew! Good luck with everything!

I was trying and trying to access your blog at work (shh, don't tell but I try to do my comments at work because I have more time there than at home - go figure!) but it would not come up!Your cookies look fantastic! Rrwwrw! =) (Love the animal print dish!) I used the same berry mix, blue/cran and cherry and loved it! Your photos look fab too!Hope your move goes smoothly! Living in the duplex in the meantime sounds like a fun adventure for the family! And Scott must have inherited your artistic ability in baking and transferred it in painting!